A Finland Diary

A Journey into the Religious Past & Present of Finland

by Jim Forest

Friday, May 8, 1998 / New Valaam Monastery: There’s
thunder in the distance and a waterfall-like roar all around the building. I’ve
opened the window—three layers of glass—just to better hear and
feel it. It’s cool outside but not freezing, though there is snow here
and there on the ground and the adjacent lake is still under ice. I’m
a lot farther north than I was when I put on my spring jacket and flew out of
Holland this morning. This is the Finnish part of Karelia. The nearest city
with an airport is Finland’s easternmost city, Joensuu, 375 kilometers
northeast of Helsinki and 65 kilometers west of the Russian border. Ten years
ago I was on the other side of the border not far from here.

It was an easy flight, clear skies the whole way. After admiring the patchwork
patterns made by polders near the Ijsselmeer, I had a fine view of the Wadden
Zee and its sandbar-like islands, then across the North Sea to Denmark, over
Sweden, then to Finland. There were three hours on the ground in the Helsinki
airport before boarding a crowded plane to Joensuu, where I was met by Juha
Riikonen, staff member of the Lay Academy at New Valaam Monastery.

We drove to the monastery, passing through a shower so heavy that it made
me think of Noah’s flood. It was hard to see anything. The rain stopped
as suddenly as it had started, revealing the wilderness of rural Finland—dense
forest and lakes. Finland has a population of five million people and nearly
200,000 lakes: one lake for every 15 people. We had a fine view of a vermilion
setting sun sandwiched between gray clouds over lake and black forest.

There was a bag supper waiting when we arrived—by then it was past nine,
when the kitchen closes. Before eating it in my little room, I walked around
just to get a sense of the place. The main structure is a handsome, white-walled,
copper-domed church in the old Russian style. The mosaic icon over the entrance
indicates the church is dedicated to the Transfiguration.

Saturday night, May 9, 1998:Kristus nousi kuolleista!
Totisesti nousi! (Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!) The Paschal greeting
is hard enough to write, still harder to pronounce correctly.

It’s 10:00 p.m. and I’m in an office of the New Valaam Lay Academy
adjacent to the icon painting room where a dozen skillful amateurs are busily
at work despite the hour. Icon painting is one of the most popular courses here.
The quality of the work is impressive, though all the students at this session
are Lutherans except their Orthodox teacher, Alexander Wikström. Lutherans
come in great numbers to New Valaam—about 150,000 visitors a year, probably
90 percent of them Lutheran. One of the monastery’s vocations is to be
a place where non-Orthodox people can learn about Orthodox Christianity. It
must be one of the reasons that about 600 adults each year join the Orthodox
Church in Finland—this in a country in which the Orthodox population altogether
is roughly 60,000.

The day began with the Divine Liturgy in the church. Before the service, I
was able to venerate Finland’s most treasured icon, the Konevits Mother
of God, painted six centuries ago on Mount Athos and given to the Valaam Monastery
from its foundation. It has miraculously survived many fires and wars.

This afternoon I gave a lecture on prayer with icons to the icon students
plus about thirty participants in other classes. By and large Finnish Lutherans,
however attracted to icons and other aspects of Orthodox Christianity, seemed
surprised at the idea that it might be a good thing to a have an icon corner
in one’s home and to use it as a place of daily prayer. I read them Gorky’s
vivid description of his grandmother’s time of morning prayer (from the
introduction to Praying with Icons), then spent the next hour talking
about what we could learn about the fundamentals of prayer from this hard-pressed,
uneducated Russian woman who died before the 1917 Revolution.

The Lay Academy has about 3,000 students per year. The average course is three
to five days and can be on a wide range of topics that have some bearing on
Orthodoxy: Liturgy, prayer, icons (not only painting them but learning to see
and understand icons), church architecture, church history, monastic life, literature
by Orthodox authors, the social dimension of Orthodoxy, and so on. All students
take part in some of the services in the church and get a glimpse of monastic
life.

In the late afternoon there was a service at a tiny lakeside chapel built
of logs and dedicated to St. Nicholas. If it had been yesterday, we would have
been chased inside by the rain but today there was only one brief downpour,
sudden and fierce, during the Liturgy this morning.

I visited the abbot, Igumen Sergei. His apartment is entirely furnished by
things that had been in the abbot’s residence when the community was on
the other side of the border. Apart from electric lights, there was no trace
of the modern world. We could have been in nineteenth-century Russia, though
New Valaam’s present monastic community is entirely Finnish. Fr. Sergei
is not even Russian-speaking. When needed he can sing the Slavonic service,
though nearly everything is done in Finnish.

Part of our conversation was about the history of Valaam Monastery, which
began on an island on vast Lake Ladoga north of St. Petersburg. For centuries
it was one of the centers of Russian monastic life and missionary activity.
It was Valaam that sent the missionary saint, Herman, to Alaska in 1794, the
first Orthodox priest in the western hemisphere. Despite periodic destruction
caused by wars between Sweden and Russia, the Valaam Monastery survived until
the “Winter War” between Soviet Russia and Finland in 1940. With
bombs raining down day after day, the monks had to flee. The community loaded
up every sled they had with church and domestic furniture, books, and icons.
(Most of the icons they carried are typical examples of nineteenth-century iconography—a
vaguely Orthodox tribute to the worst Roman Catholic art.) Their trek ended
here, in a part of Karelia that, luckily for them, remained part of Finland
after Karelia was cut in half following Soviet Russia’s victory.

We talked about problems the Finnish Church experiences these days in its
relations with the Church in Russia. “Eight years ago the old Valaam was
returned to the Church and monastic life restarted,” Fr. Sergei explained.
“The buildings are gradually being rebuilt, in some cases with our help.
Unfortunately many monks of the restored Valaam do not regard us as Orthodox
at all—for them, you can only be Orthodox if you are on the old calendar.”
It is a scandal for them that the Finnish Orthodox Church keeps the main feasts
of the same calendar as the Lutheran Church—an arrangement imposed by
the state when it recognized the Finnish Orthodox Church as being a second state
church. The issue still causes occasional tension among Orthodox believers.
For years the Valaam monastic community was deeply divided, part of the community
on the old calendar, part on the new. It must have been easy for the monks to
imagine hell.

Still another irritant for the community at the revived Valaam in Russia is
that the monks who fled the bombing in 1940 carried away nearly everything smaller
than bell towers. While nothing at New Valaam is stolen property, the monks
at the original location want it all back. I suggested to the abbot that, though
they have no duty to return anything, still it would be a healing gesture if
the Finnish Valaam gave the Russian Valaam some of the icons that used to be
there—an icon can sometimes melt frozen hearts. Fr. Sergei agreed but
said this was not something he could do unilaterally. Such things had to be
decided by the Council of the Finnish Church. There are attachments on both
sides.

Another source of tension between the Finnish and Russian Churches is the
complex problem of Estonia, where the local Orthodox Church was broken in two,
some parishes under Moscow, others under Constantinople. Estonian and Finnish
are sister languages and the cultures are similar; the Finnish Church therefore
has a close tie with the Estonian parishes now linked to Constantinople.

After my visit with Fr. Sergei, I joined Pekka Tuovinen, teacher of the theology
of icons at the Lay Academy, in a visit to the nearby woman’s Holy Trinity
Monastery of Lintula for the Saturday evening vigil. Though the community is
larger, the convent is a quieter place than New Valaam. While retreatants are
welcome throughout the year, the nuns only open their doors to tourists in the
summer months. This community too had a Russian base—a group of nuns who
fled from the precincts of St. Petersburg in 1939, escaping with only one icon.

After supper, with the sun setting, Juha and I visited the monastic cemetery
across the lake from New Valaam, walking among the many wooden crosses. Perhaps
half the monks who came here in 1940 were dead by 1945. Many were old men when
they arrived. One monk, Igumen Simforian, died in 1981 after 75 years in monastic
life. Another had been a monk more than 80 years when he died in 1984 at age
110.

Sunday, May 10, 1998: I just left Joensuu by train a little
while ago and have been watching trees, trees, and more trees out the window,
with the occasional small wooden house—sometimes a log house—here
and there, and lakes of various sizes. Juha and Pekka, plus Pekka’s dog
Jona, brought me to the city by car, stopping at the social hall of one of Joensuu’s
Orthodox parishes for a cup of coffee and a slice of Mother’s Day cake.
On Mother’s Day the national flag, a blue cross on a white field, flies
from many flagpoles.

The weather is taking a summery turn. Pekka said the thin ice that was on
the nearby pond yesterday was completely gone this morning. We saw only a few
pockets of snow in deeply shaded places.

It was a very beautiful Liturgy at the monastery this morning—a full
choir today rather than two monks taking turns singing the choir parts as happened
yesterday. It seems the practice in Finland that iconostasis curtains are rarely
if ever used and the royal doors are kept open once the service has begun. As
the melodies are in the Russian tradition, I had no trouble following the Liturgy—in
fact, I felt carried into it as by an irresistible undertow. The whole congregation
sang all the antiphons as well as the Creed and the Our Father.

Before the service I had a chance encounter with Igumen Sergei, who once again
invited me to return, but next time “with your dear wife Nancy.”

More trees, more lakes, more cloudless blue sky. A perfect day.

Krista Berglund, a Russian scholar, met me at the train station and brought
me to the Helsinki parish guest room, a five-minute walk. The Helsinki “parish”
turns out to be a subdiocese of 24 local churches with about 18,000 members
altogether.

Leaving my suitcase, we walked down toward the harbor, stopping for a light
meal at a café called Kappeli (the word means “chapel”),
a mostly glass structure built in the days when Finland was a province of Russia.
The heart of the city looks like St. Petersburg but with fewer scars. From our
table we had a view of a fountain, the harbor and two great churches: the Lutheran
cathedral to the left, the Uspenski cathedral to the right, the largest Orthodox
place of worship in Europe.

Thanks to Krista, I begin to understand why Helsinki has such a Russian flavor.
Russians and Swedes were contesting Finland for most of the past thousand years.
From the twelfth century until the beginning of the nineteenth, Swedes had the
upper hand. Then in 1808, during the reign of Czar Alexander I, Russia invaded,
and the following year Stockholm ceded power to St. Petersburg, though Finland
under Russia was granted a degree of autonomy. In 1812, the fishing village
of Helsinki became the Finnish capital. The city center’s many fine Russian
buildings in the classical style reflect this event. It’s one of the reasons
Helsinki has played the role of St. Petersburg in such films as Reds.

The nineteenth century, the century of nationalism, saw Finns develop a deeper
sense of national identity. In 1863, Czar Alexander II, whose statue still dominates
Helsinki’s main square, began a process that made the Finnish language—in
Swedish days illegal—equal to Swedish. There are still two “state
languages.” In 1917, a few weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, Finland
declared its independence, which Lenin quickly accepted, anticipating that Finland
would become Communist. Overnight the Karelian region, which included Valaam
Monastery, with its population of Russian monks, found itself inside the borders
of independent Finland. This turned out to be a good thing, given what was soon
to happen to monks and other believers in Russia. Eighty years ago there was
a brief but vicious civil war in Finland between “Reds” and “Whites,”
with the latter winning.

In 1939, the USSR attacked Finland and seized the northern Arctic territories
and much of Finnish Karelia—the “Winter War.” Finland, though
attempting to remain neutral, allowed Nazi Germany to move troops across its
territory against the USSR in World War II, but in 1944 managed to get out of
the war, ceding land and agreeing to pay reparations to Moscow. In 1948 Finland
reluctantly (“an offer you cannot refuse”) signed a “friendship
treaty” with the USSR that obliged Finland to help resist any attack on
the Soviet Union that involved Finnish territory and bound Finland to an uncritical
role in regard to the USSR. The treaty, though allowing trade and good relations
with the West, created a situation in which the USSR could influence Finnish
foreign policy.

In 1989 Gorbachev recognized Finland’s neutrality. Three years later
Finland and Russia signed a treaty that recognized equality, sovereignty, and
positive economic relations. Also in 1992, Finland chose closer links with Europe
by applying for membership in the European Union. In 1994 the EU accepted the
application, endorsed by a national referendum. It seems to have been a good
move—the Finnish economy is currently healthy after a long and deep recession.

One sign of the affluence is the omnipresence of cellular phones. In Finland
they seem to be used by everyone but newborn infants. There are two and one-half
million such phones in use in this country with its population of five million.

Tuesday, May 12, 1998: Fr. Heikki Huttunen took me to one
of the city’s most remarkable establishments for lunch—the Orthodox
Kitchen—two floors below the guest room in which I am holed up. This project
of the Helsinki parish is open once a week to anyone who appreciates home cooking
and has little or no money. Fr. Heikki explained that, though the social support
system in Finland is strong, there is a growing number of people who fall through
the net. There were fresh-cut flowers on all the tables. The main decorations
were signs in a vast array of languages, all with the Pascal greeting: “Christ
is risen! He is risen indeed.” My main surprise was to find Metropolitan
Leo at one of the tables in animated conversation with several men whose faces
showed as much wear as their battered clothing.

Fr. Heikki regretted that projects like this are so new to the Finnish Orthodox
Church—the Orthodox Kitchen is only two or three years old. He blamed
the delay in launching social activities on the Finnish Orthodox “refugee
mentality.” He explained that 75 percent of the Orthodox community in
Finland had to move west to be within Finland’s redrawn borders at the
end of World War II. It was like the flight of many Orthodox to the Greek part
of Cyprus after the island’s division. The Finnish Karelians were successfully
resettled by the Finnish government but had all the usual traumas of uprooted
people. Also many Finns regarded Orthodox people in general as Russians. For
years many Finnish Orthodox felt like refugees in their own country. “We
were for long caught up in our own difficulties.”

In fact Orthodoxy has been in Finland for centuries. The movement to translate
the Liturgy into Finnish began around 1780. In 1815 the synod of the Russian
Orthodox Church decided that in the Grand Duchy of Finland the biblical texts
could be read in the language of the people. There are Finnish parishes in which
the whole Liturgy has been celebrated in Finnish since about 1850. Much of this
was thanks to the constructive role played at the time by Metropolitan Anthony
Vadkovsky of St. Petersburg.

Once again Russians are coming to Finland, according to Fr. Heikki. Something
like 40,000 people from the former USSR have become residents in the last few
years. Last night at Krista Berglund’s flat I met one of them: Sasha Skopets,
originally from Murmansk. She told us how tapes by Fr. Georgi Kotchetkov (the
Moscow priest who is in hot water for using a modern Russian translation of
the Liturgy) played a crucial role in her conversion to Orthodox Christianity.

My lecture—“Nationalism, Orthodoxy, and Peacemaking”—was
in the same hall of the Helsinki parish building that is used at midday for
the Orthodox Kitchen. Though Krista had prepared a translation, it turned out
that everyone in the room spoke English fluently. As in Holland, films and many
other programs are shown on Finnish TV in their original language, which is
mainly English. For many Finns, English has become a second language.

Wednesday, May 13, 1998: I attended the Liturgy this morning
at the oldest Orthodox church in Helsinki, Holy Trinity, a short walk from the
Helsinki parish office in the direction of the harbor. It was like being in
an old St. Petersburg parish: good examples of Russian iconography, silver work
and architecture of the early nineteenth century. A choir of four sang.

For an hour in the late morning I met with Metropolitan Leo, head of the Helsinki
diocese, in his top-floor apartment in a building next to the parish office.
He is a widower living with his father and 23-year-old daughter. We talked about
his recent visit in Istanbul with the ecumenical patriarch, relations with the
Russian Orthodox Church, the situation of the Orthodox Church in Estonia, the
work of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, and also my book on icons. At the end
of our visit, he took me out on the apartment balcony, pointing out many Helsinki
landmarks. We had a fine view of spring’s effect on Helsinki. You can
almost hear the leaves bursting from the trees.

This was followed by a visit with Jyrki Härkönen, editor of Orthodoksi
Viesti magazine, Finland’s largest Orthodox journal. Later I talked
with their staff photographer, Pasi Peiponen, about the Russian pianist and
outspoken Orthodox Christian of the Stalin era, Maria Yudina—a true Daniel-in-the-lion’s-den.

The next stop was at Krista Berglund’s for lunch: lentil soup and dark
bread. Krista is editing a book on contemporary views by Russians writers as
to what “Russianness” is all about, an issue much under discussion
since the collapse of the USSR. We also talked about St. Seraphim of Sarov and
the bear he befriended. Krista has a great devotion to bears. There is a sort
of iconostasis over her computer made of photos of people dear to her, but mixed
in with the human beings are bears. There are more bear photos on the refrigerator
door, as well as several teddy bears in a corner of her small living room.

The day’s main event was a talk after vespers at Fr. Heikki’s
parish, dedicated to St. Herman of Alaska. The congregation currently uses rented
rooms in a sterile business building in a suburb of Helsinki, but the handsome
church they are building should be finished in July and is to be consecrated
on October 4. Many of the icons that will be used in the new church are now
in the rented chapel—all exceptionally good work. Fr. Heikki estimates
that there are about 200 Finnish iconographers doing work of a quality suitable
for church use.

Deacon Juha Lampinen, who does youth work for the Helsinki parish, gave me
a lift back into the city. It was after nine and, as I hadn’t had supper,
I walked from the parish office toward the train station, and ended up having
a MacDonald’s fish sandwich for supper: 15 Finnish Marks, about $3.50.
Soon after returning to the guest room, Father Juha knocked on the door and
brought me back to his apartment for coffee and cognac with him and his wife,
Maria. Their 11-year-old daughter, Marina, introduced me to her pet turtle.
It was a blessing to be in a place where one has to step over toys.

Thursday, May 14, 1998: There was Liturgy at Fr. Heikki’s
parish at eight this morning for a group of 20 or so high-school students plus
a few adults, then a quick breakfast before we boarded a bus and set off for
a two-day Orthodox youth trip, the theme of which is war, peace, and Orthodoxy.

Going east, our first stop was the town of Loviisa, which hosts a four-day
peace festival that starts each year on August 6, Hiroshima Day. Next we stopped
at a rural center where those doing alternative service participate in a month-long
program of preparation for whatever they will do in the following 12 months.
Quite a few Orthodox young men have done alternative service at New Valaam,
which was the first Orthodox institution to open its doors as a place of employment
for conscientious objectors. Finland still has military conscription for men
and maintains a surprisingly large army, but about five percent of those drafted
opt for civilian alternative service, though it entails a longer interruption
of their life.

The last stop of the day was at Lappeenranta, a stone’s throw from the
Russian border, once a Russian garrison town. It has changed so little that
I could imagine Czar Alexander arriving on horseback any minute. There’s
a dirt street down the middle, a string of one-story wooden buildings painted
in pale greens and creams, creamy browns and mustards, several old brick barracks,
and in the middle of it all the oldest Orthodox church still standing in Finland,
built in 1785 and dedicated to the Protection of the Mother of God.

This region is now as peaceful as Lake Wobegon, but 80 years ago, during Finland’s
civil war, it was a place of bitter fighting and at times amazing cruelty. Not
far from here an Orthodox priest was tied to the railway tracks by local Communists
and killed by a passing train. For the atheist “Red” side, priests
were by definition enemies of the Revolution, but occasionally the “White”
side also attacked priests and pillaged Orthodox churches, as Orthodox Christians
were regarded as Russian.

After a light supper, we sang a short vespers service in the church, after
which I led a discussion on confronting evil and overcoming the fear of death.
Probably the most important thing I did was to explain the St. George icon,
telling the story of this young martyr and explaining why he is shown in armor,
riding a horse, lancing a dragon even though he wasn’t a soldier, had
no armor or weapons, and never saw a dragon. What he faced was the dragon of
fear wearing the armor of faith and riding the horse of the courage God gave
him. His lance is not a weapon but the Cross. Whether or not we become soldiers,
we are required by baptism to be warriors.

Friday, May 15, 1998: The day’s main event was visiting
a training center for army officers and meeting with an Orthodox chaplain who
gives a witness to the priority of faith by always dressing as a priest though
he is an army officer. Lutheran chaplains prefer the uniform to clerical attire.
At least in Finland military chaplains have a choice.

Back in Helsinki I spent the evening at the apartment of Fr. Heikki and Leena
Huttunen in the Tapiola suburb on the city’s west side: lots of trees,
a breeze coming in from the balcony door, the sound of children playing outside.
A week ago it was almost winter here—today it feels like mid-summer. I’ve
given the last of the Dutch cheeses I brought along as house gifts and am sipping
a dark Czech beer.

Saturday, May 16, 1998 / en route to Amsterdam: Breakfasting
this morning with Fr. Timo Lehmuskoski, we talked about the tension within the
Finnish Church between those born in Orthodox families and converts. Among the
many converts is the current head of the Church, Archbishop John. The converts
sometimes regard those born to Orthodoxy as bit players in the Church, less
alert to Church teaching and practice than themselves, while the cradle Orthodox
often regard those who came to the Church in adolescence or adulthood as Lutherans
pretending to be Orthodox.

I’ve been gazing out the airplane window at the scenery below, a parade
of Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden, and just moments ago the last of Denmark.
Off the Danish coast I had my first look at an oceanic whirlpool—huge
arcs of creamy white converging in the sea on a dense foamy core.

Ah! The first glimpse of the Wadden Zee islands and the Dutch coastline. n
Jim Forest (“Finland Diary”) is secretary of the Orthodox Peace
Fellowship and edits its publication, “In Communion.” He is the
author of many books, including Praying with Icons. He is a frequent lecturer
and has led retreats at centers in both the United States and England. He and
his wife Nancy have six children and make their home in Alkmaar, Holland, a
city northwest of Amsterdam.

Jim Forest is secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship
and edits its publication, “In Communion.” He is the author of many
books, including Praying with Icons. He is a frequent lecturer and
has led retreats at centers in both the United States and England. He and his
wife Nancy have six children and make their home in Alkmaar, Holland, a city
northwest of Amsterdam.

“A Finland Diary” first appeared in the January/February 1999 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

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